The British victory on Long Island might, he thought, make Congress more willing to negotiate.

So now he sent to Philadelphia the captured American General Sullivan, with the request that some members of Congress might confer privately on the prospects for peace.
Howe probably did not realize that the Americans had the British quality of becoming more resolute by temporary reverses.

By this time, too, suspicion of every movement on the part of Great Britain had become a mania.

Every one in Congress seems to have thought that Howe was planning treachery.

John Adams, excepted by name from British offers of pardon, called Sullivan a "decoy duck" and, as he confessed, laughed, scolded, and grieved at any negotiation.